"There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth
are absent."
Leo Tolstoy

Friday, July 15, 2011

Smelling The Crazy

For Conservatives, Paul Krugman is more than an apostate; he is the Anti-Christ. But his column in today's New York Times is required reading. He writes that it's strange how many people, who have been in denial, are now "waking up and smelling the crazy."

The Republican Party dove off the deep end long ago. They were driven mad when Bill Clinton assumed the presidency:

First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the
legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We
saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama
took office.

As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the
president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the
past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on
American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And
the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals.

But Arthur Laffer -- the Pied Piper of Supply Side Economics -- also led them over the edge. Ronald Reagan quickly realized that the Laffer Curve was a fiction. But, having mythologized the Gipper, modern Republicans refuse to see the fallacy:

Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves
and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been
a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced
the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained.
Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a
considerable extent his initial cuts

Recently, however, all restraint has vanished — indeed, it has been
driven out of the party. Last year Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority
leader, asserted that the Bush tax cuts actually increased revenue
— a claim completely at odds with the evidence — and also declared that
this was “the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.” And
it’s true: even Mr. Romney, widely regarded as the most sensible of the
contenders for the 2012 presidential nomination, has endorsed the view that tax cuts can actually reduce the deficit.

So the United States finds itself in the embarrassing position of being held hostage by a group of politicians who will not be swayed by facts or logic. They are addicted to a world view that is as wrong headed as the one which motivates the members of The Flat Earth Society.

4 comments:

It's fascinating to watch McConnell and Boehner squirm. They're torn between two intensely opposite factions within their caucuses - the sane people and the Tea Party lunatics that they truly fear. The TP Repugs are true Khmer Rougers. They're nuts but crazy talk has a voice that's heard today in the US Congress.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.